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“We have one now who is our Historian, who is called ‘Old One.’ He is very skilled at what he does, but he is eager to teach you things that you cannot teach yourself by observation,” Thunder Horse said. He lifted his hand from his nephew’s shoulder and rested it again on his knee.
“My chieftain uncle, I not only want to be our people’s Historian, I want to be like you,” Lone Wing blurted out. “I want to be a man of strict honor, a man of undoubted truthfulness and unbounded generosity.”
“You will be all of those things,” Thunder Horse said, smiling at Lone Wing. “Give yourself time and you will become the man your heart is leading you to be.”
“If I could, I would be you,” Lone Wing said, then giggled as he saw his uncle’s eyes twinkle at that comment.
He watched as Thunder Horse looked away from him to gaze into the flames of the fire. His uncle’s eyes seem to fill with shadow and thought, and Lone Wing wondered what had taken him away so quickly.
He sat there quietly as he waited for Thunder Horse to remember that he still sat there with him.
As Thunder Horse gazed into the fire, the orange of the flames reminded him of flowing, flame-colored hair, catapulting him again back in time to the moment when he had seen the white woman up close and realized just how mesmerizingly beautiful she was.
Something deep inside him warned against thinking about the lady.
Whites had taken much from his people. She was white, and worse still, she was somehow connected to the man all of Thunder Horse’s people despised.
Yet no matter how wrong it was to think about her, or how hard he tried not to, Thunder Horse could not let go of his memory of her. Like no other woman before her, she had put fire in his heart!
He suddenly rose and went to where he stored his clothes. Hurriedly he pulled on a fringed buckskin outfit.
Suddenly he was not as bone-weary as he had been earlier. Thinking of the woman had revived him.
He would no longer just speculate about her. He would go and observe her.
“Chieftain uncle, are you going somewhere?” Lone Wing asked as he gathered his nest and bird into his hands and rose to his feet just as Thunder Horse placed a sheathed knife at the left side of his waist.
“Ho, but I will not be long,” Thunder Horse said. He gently placed a hand on Lone Wing’s shoulder and escorted him outside, where the sky was now black and filled with sequined stars and a tiny sliver of moon.
Lone Wing nodded and watched his uncle prepare his steed, then ride away into the night.
“Perhaps he needs another night of fasting after all,” he whispered, then shrugged his shoulders and hurried toward his own tepee, where he would show his mother the sweetness of the baby bird.
Chapter Four
A string quartet played music as people danced on the highly polished oak floor of Reginald’s music room. A crystal chandelier in the center of the ceiling cast sparkling droplets of light onto the crowd.
Jessie stood back from everyone. She was alone for the moment, taking in the party Reginald had thrown to introduce her to the community.
Sometimes laughing, sometimes wheezing, he mingled now with the crowd. For the moment he seemed to have forgotten Jessie, which made her feel tremendously relieved.
She felt so out of place among Reginald’s friends. As yet, only a few had come up to her and introduced themselves.
Although the party was for her, Reginald was truly the center of attention. Everyone praised his house, his paintings in the other rooms, and his beautiful grand piano, which no one had been asked to play.
Jessie was dressed in a lovely pale green satin ball gown that Reginald had had waiting in her room for her. Lace fell down the front of the bodice in billows of white, and her tiny waist was accentuated by a green velvet ribbon that wrapped around to the front and was tied in a bow so the ends trailed down the full skirt.
Jade had fussed endlessly with Jessie’s hair, bringing it up in long curls to her crown, where it was fastened by diamond-encrusted combs. She had left the ends of the curls free to fall loosely down to the nape of her neck.
As Jade had stood behind Jessie, combing and twining her auburn hair into those huge curls, Jessie had watched her in the mirror. The lovely Chinese woman had hidden the bruises on her face tonight with powder the same color as her skin, and Jessie knew that Reginald was responsible for the beating. No one but Jessie and Reginald had been in the house prior to the arrival of his guests.
Jessie had wanted so badly to ask Jade about the bruises but knew that the woman would say nothing. No doubt she feared Reginald’s reaction should he discover that she’d confided in anyone that she was physically abused by a man whom everyone saw as pure and holy. Jessie was quickly discovering that he was anything but that.
She dreaded being a part of his household now and wished that she had somewhere else to go, someone else to help her in her time of trouble. Being with child, she was even more vulnerable now than ever.
She had to do everything she could to protect this child, for in truth, her baby was all she now had on this earth!
Jessie watched Jade as she walked around, offering drinks to the guests. Jade walked with humbled, lowered eyes, as she tried not to allow anyone else to see her injuries.
